It Was Pretty Good

I was late to Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two. I had seen the first film in theaters and was impressed by its suspense, psychological terror, and harsh view of the world. Having seen much of the It mini-series I didn’t feel much need to see Muschietti’s second film until I felt drawn to the movie after being so impressed with the recent HBO show The Outsider, which was also based on a Stephen King book.

There’s no need for a full review of such a popular film, but I was impressed. The cast is near flawless (James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, James Ransone, Bill Skarsgard, among others), and the computer generated imagery actually serves the suspense well. At nearly three hours, the filmmakers could have easily cut out many of the flashbacks because the first film already covered the backstories of the adult characters when they were children.

I wanted to briefly mention It Chapter Two because the near-climax of the film brought to mind Alex Garland’s Annihilation. In the latter film, the diegetic sound (the sounds within the space of the story including character dialogue and noises) collapses and fragments with the non-diegetic sound (the sounds outside the story space, i.e. the film score). It Chapter Two briefly does something similar near the end of the film, and both its sound and imagery brings recalls Annihilation.

I mention this because I think that Garland’s film may have set a trend that filmgoers can expect to see more of in the future. In neither instance is this process done just for show either. In Garland’s film, the move reflects the way that the premise is about a zone where genetic cells in humans, animals, and plants are refracted like light. For Muschietti, the trick alludes to how the film’s evil clown Pennywise is a light source that reflects fear hallucinations to its victims. Anyway, these films illustrate that even some big budget films are doing intelligent, new things with cinema.